The Flaming Corsage

“Cully Watson Hanged”, Albany Argus, May 24, 1910

CULBERT (CULLY) WATSON, known in Albany for years as a hotel sneak and petty hoodlum, was hanged from a telegraph pole in the French Quarter of New Orleans last night after being taken off a train at gunpoint by four men in kerchief masks. Watson was en route to New Orleans for trial on an attempted-murder charge, and was in custody of two New Orleans detectives when the four masked men disarmed and tied up the detectives, and fled the train with Watson.

His corpse was found hanging on Bourbon Street, near the hotel where ten days ago, police say, he raped, robbed, and left for dead a twenty-seven-year-old woman. She had been smothered, but revived to find the room filled with gas from an open jet. She said she’d seen her attacker working at the hotel desk as night clerk. Police said the attacker had gained entry to and left the woman’s room through the transom, and that Watson was slim and agile enough to accomplish this. He has a known history of such unlawful entry and assault on women.

Police caught Watson with the woman’s diamond brooch and $2,000 in cash as he stepped off a train at Memphis. To bargain with police, Watson told of his connection to the infamous Love Nest killings of 1908, when a prominent Albany physician, Giles Fitzroy, murdered his wife, shot and wounded the Albany playwright Edward Daugherty, then killed himself. The shootings took place at the Millerton House in Manhattan, where Watson was then working. He disappeared after the killings.

Police said Dr. Fitzroy and Daugherty testified against Watson at a hearing into a river-barge brawl in 1906, and Watson may have held a grudge against them. Police have a lengthy statement from Watson about the Love Nest case but have disclosed no details about Watson’s role in it; but they did say that others may be involved.